Wales’ Education Minister,
Jeremy Miles, told
a meeting of business professionals in Wrecsam yesterday that children should
start learning about the world of work from the age of three. He also argued
that children should be helped to get off the educational ‘conveyor belt’ which
sees progression to a university place as the natural aspirational outcome for the
education system and look instead at more technical and vocational
qualifications. The latter is a common argument, advanced by Tory and Labour
politicians alike; and the idea of early contact with the world of work is
hardly a strange one either, although whether it should start as early as three
is open to rather more question.
They are both arguments which
leave me uneasy, however, because they both raise questions about the purpose
of education. Both seem to start from the point of view that the aim of the
education system is – and should be – the production of ‘employment-ready’
workers; people with the skills, aptitudes and attitudes required for them to
fit into the roles which employers have to offer. There is a lack of any
understanding of the potential value, both to the individuals themselves and to
society as a whole, of education, learning and a wider skillset not necessarily
immediately applicable to any particular job. And although they skate round the
issue and prefer to avoid facing up to it, the idea that some children should be
encouraged to follow a more ‘vocational’ pathway is, in practice, to argue that
higher education should be reserved for the privileged. We have decades of
knowledge which tells us that it effectively means (with a few exceptions which
enable people to talk vaguely about ‘equality of opportunity’ and ‘social
mobility’) separating middle class and working class children into two different
educational pathways. They always claim that such a separation is based on ‘ability’,
but that ability is assessed on the basis of an educational system which
consistently allows children from more affluent households to progress further
than the rest. It’s not that I disagree with the notion that a university
education might not be the right route for everyone, or the notion that there
should be more parity of esteem between a degree and other forms of
qualification; it’s just that the economic inequalities of the society in which
we live largely predetermine which children follow which route and end up
preserving those very inequalities as a result.
It would be far better to
start encouraging children from an early age to think about what a fulfilling
life might look like. For some – particularly the middle class children who
enter the well-paid professions – their future employment might be a large part
of that, but for many, work will be a necessary but largely unfulfilling part
of their future life. Giving children the means and the skills to seek their
fulfilment outside of their working life would be doing more for them than
turning them into mere ‘resources’ for employers to exploit. It would also make
for a more balanced society; not every worthwhile human activity has an
economic value. There is, though, one other thing it would probably also do,
which is why supporters of the current economic system – Labour and Tory alike –
will shy away from it: it would lead people to question the whole basis of an
economic system which sees children as young as three primarily as future
workers whose role is to serve the system. Not all of us would see that questioning as a
bad thing.
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